At the start of June, I was doing an oil change underneath my beloved 233,000-mile"Adventure Mobile." On my back, I looked up and noticed a catastrophic amount of rust on the frame, so bad I could put my entire hand through it. My heart plummeted. I knew that was it. The time had come, and for the sake of safety I needed to say goodbye.
I’ve bought and sold a few cars over the years, but I honestly didn’t expect it to be that difficult and hard for me to get rid of this one. I credit the fact that this small black wagon has been with me through some of the best and triumphant peaks in life, and also the hardest and unsure. For six years and 127,000 miles, I relied on that 2005 Saab 9-2x to get me to both where I needed and where I wanted to go, and the thought of it being absent felt mortifying. “But come on, Robby, it’s a just car,” I kept telling myself, looking for excuses to shake the sad feelings I had become overwhelmed with after taking insurance off of it, hypothesizing over how much it would cost to fully fix, and then accepting that it’s dangerous to drive. This was an important car for me, so here's a tribute.
I learned that it could serve as a refuge of warmth during my first solo camping trip in the north woods of Governor Thompson State Park back in late October 2013. It was possible to spread out across the middle row in a sleeping bag, even being over six feet tall. I learned patience when it came to repairing things big and fixing things small. Some things on this car were easy DIY tasks, others were cumbersome and a journey For example, having to remove the entire front bumper just to change a burnt-out headlight, was harder than installing a new alternator.
I’ve bought and sold a few cars over the years, but I honestly didn’t expect it to be that difficult and hard for me to get rid of this one. I credit the fact that this small black wagon has been with me through some of the best and triumphant peaks in life, and also the hardest and unsure. For six years and 127,000 miles, I relied on that 2005 Saab 9-2x to get me to both where I needed and where I wanted to go, and the thought of it being absent felt mortifying. “But come on, Robby, it’s a just car,” I kept telling myself, looking for excuses to shake the sad feelings I had become overwhelmed with after taking insurance off of it, hypothesizing over how much it would cost to fully fix, and then accepting that it’s dangerous to drive. This was an important car for me, so here's a tribute.
I learned that it could serve as a refuge of warmth during my first solo camping trip in the north woods of Governor Thompson State Park back in late October 2013. It was possible to spread out across the middle row in a sleeping bag, even being over six feet tall. I learned patience when it came to repairing things big and fixing things small. Some things on this car were easy DIY tasks, others were cumbersome and a journey For example, having to remove the entire front bumper just to change a burnt-out headlight, was harder than installing a new alternator.